“WIN”. What’s Important Now

How important is the warm up and warm down time during a swim meet?  There are probably a million opinions out there and I believe that sometimes the swimmer athlete tends to listen to the one that offers the easiest path as opposed to the one that leads to healthy success.  Why do we bring this up you may wonder?  At  the IMX meet this past weekend I had a lot of spare time on my hands so I had time to observe a lot of different characteristics.  I was amazed to see the number of swimmers who got out after their last race, grab their bags and head out. As coaches we hear a lot of things from our athletes such as I'm tight, tired or sore, and I just wonder how much of that could be prevented.   Battle the stiffness and muscle fatigue by ensuring your muscles are warm pre-race and then take the time to cool down post-racing.  If you don't warm up, you risk pulling muscles or just feeling like a stiff board.  If you skip  cool down you will likely feel your muscles start to tight

This past weekend we had 18 of our swimmers competed in the IMX meet at UMD over a three day period. It was a fun meet where the kids got to gain meet and racing experience as we head into the March championships.  This meet provided the opportunity for the kids to swim a meet without all of the 50’s.  It also provided an opportunity to gain a lot of confidence by swimming the longer events over a three day period and opened their eyes to the possibilities that are out their.  It also allowed them to swim kids from all over the northeast to give them a fresh outlook heading into March. The meet started on Friday afternoon with all of the 11 and overs 🏊‍♀️ swimming the 500 free.  Following the plan that was set up for them the mako swimmers would produce 16 best times (a lot of them shattering their personal best) and quite a few of who got the bell 🔔 lap to win their heats. Saturday started early with the 13&14 year olds competing in the 200 fly, 200IM and the 200 breast.  The ma

Hope everyone is having a fun filled day off from school.  This weekend we will travel to the University of Maryland for the IMX meet and we would like to set up some kind of plan so that you are somewhat relaxed as you go through the weekend.  The first thing we want you to do is to approach the weekend with an open mind and approach each event separately.  One thing that we have worked on in practice is to stay in the moment.  Work through each event as they come up, and what we mean by this is don’t get wrapped up with Sunday’s events on Friday, you are only wasting energy and becoming mentally fatigued over something that is 2 days off. Five general things that you should focus on for the events this weekend are TIGHT STREAMLINES- let your body flow through the water off the block and every wall INCREASE THE TEMPO- as you work through your race don’t forget to find that easy speed on the first 50 because you are already moving fast off the blocks so control it.  As you work t

We’ve been back in the pool now for two weeks since the holidays and are working hard towards the February qualifiers as we get ready for that final push into the Spring championship season.  This past week Mother Nature threw us one of her curve balls with last weekends snow storm closing the pools on Monday.  It was great to see so many of you making up that lost time later in the week.  The first week back we spent time on our aerobic base with some long swimming and kicking sets, followed by a lot of IM stroke drills and IM racing leading into our IMX meet this next weekend.   Tuesday we spent a lot of time on drills for all the strokes in the IM, mixing in our 25’s 50’s and 75’s.  We built that next workout off of that with 25’s fast fly, 50’s back to breast and 75’s back breast free.  On Friday we through in the broken 100 and the straight 100’s   We  talked about the swimming equation and how everything we were working on related to this equation. ST =( RT + UT + TT) +( CC

Hey guys this is the best demonstration of the cross over turn that I could find.  As we progress we will spend time each day with it.  We have started to put some sets into the workout where you can start incorporating the turn in.

Over the years I have watched many swimmers walk away from big races with one of two thoughts dancing in their minds.  One is “I won”, the sense of accomplishment, or two “I lost”, the sense of failure.  A better way of viewing the results is, either you won the race or you learned from the race and as soon as you can wrap your head around that concept you will be in a better place to make some incredible strides during this process.   So maybe you didn’t hit your goal time, but is it because you had an off day or are there aspects of your race that need some work.  The approach one needs to take is, not that I lost but what can I learn from this race.   One big area that I like to watch at meet is what you are doing before you step up on the block.  Are you dressed warmly or just standing there letting your muscles get cold and tight, are watching the scoreboard and the races prior to yours, in other words are you tuned into the meet and prepared to race.  What’s the big deal?  The fa

Happy Monday!  We hope all of you had a great break the last few weeks, a chance to refresh  both physically and mentally from a long four months academically and swimming 🏊‍♀️ environment.  It was great 👍 to see so many of you make that sacrifice during the holidays and find time to put in some training sessions in the pool. We put in some good work in the pool with some long aerobic sets and some sprint training sessions mixed in.  We had some great sessions working on our underwater dolphins off the walls, and we spent a lot of time learning the crossover turn in the IM.  Although we still have a lot of work to do with them, the strides that we have made in this short time have been amazing 😉  A lot of you have asked should you use it in a meet, and the honest answer is that it’s an individual choice, but with that being said by no means should you use it during an important meet.  We’re to ready yet, but it is okay to try it for the meet this weekend.  I see both advantages and